ALICE FOX - LOST AND FOUND - THREE

I'm back to share more about the Summer School and if you missed my previous posts you can find out more here and here. As I love making handmade books I thought I would share another that I made. 

Again I painted a sheet of thick cartridge paper with green tea and covered it with rusty objects.  This time instead of using tissue paper I covered it with a piece of cotton fabric.  As before this produced 2 designs in one process.  Don't you love that?!

And here are the resulting pieces:

The cartridge paper

The fabric.
I have put this aside to use for another time.

If you are a regular visitor to my blog you may remember that I went to the Shetland Islands earlier this year.  I took over 4,000 photos and the promised posts are slow coming as I still feel daunted by sorting these out and knowing where to start. There are SO many memories and stories, but that is for another time and I have not forgotten.  But the reason I mention this is because this rusting
effect reminds me of my trip.  Lots of my photos are of rusted objects (yes I know some people take scenery, and I took those too!) and leaving home I selected a few of these photos and printed them on to tracing paper.

I loved the rust print on this cartridge paper so when Alice Fox suggested we experiment with simple book folds I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I had made this structure before and knew these photos would be perfect, so instead of a sample I went straight in to produce a finished book.  And here it is, one side of the paper folded and cut:

 And the other side:

Below is the cover, when the book is folded. 

I need to add a title and I will continue to work on this book a little more. I may add a few words or a poem and this is my usual style of working.... make a start and then let ideas germinate. Often the book directs and I follow.  I love how sometimes I do not know the outcome until it reveals itself. 

 

On to the cover I have glued a piece of a photo.  Remember it is printed onto tracing paper?  The transparency allows a blending of background and image and if you look close you might be able to make out a section of a large  bollard on a quayside, used for tying up ships and boats.  This is meant to be Bookart rather than a book of photos.  It may feature in an exhibition of my work in November but that's another story so more about that another time.

On the back of the printed side I have glued more photos.  I love how the book forms interesting shapes....

 And when you fold it, you can turn the pages.  See - it is a book!

In the last photo you can see a better image of the bollard shown on the cover.  As mentioned earlier this is a book structure that I have made before but I enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with the design and develop new ideas. There are still more posts to come... did I mention that this Summer School was amazing and that I came home with a bundle of books and printed material to work on!

5 in 5 - MELANIE - September 2015

Melanie is my friend who lives in Australia and she loves photography. Every month Melanie has taken part in this monthly neme and we managed to find a way round her not having a blog by posting here. I love that we have found a way for her to take part! So over to you Melanie:

Another 5^th of the month and my head couldn’t think of what to take five minutes of for this month’s photos.  The day was grey in fact very wet, lots of rain and not a very inspiring day for going off somewhere so I just went into the garden and did some chicken photos when it wasn’t raining.  The photos were done and life continued without me downloading the photos to the PC and sending to Sandie until I received a prompt.  Now at 11pm when the rest of the house has gone to bed I am sitting at the PC and sorting out my five in five. 

Hope you enjoy the photos they are of my new and old chickens.  My old chickens are not very good at laying eggs.  So my plan on my return from a three months overseas trip was to buy three babies ISA browns who from pass experience I know are good egg layers and see how things go.  My three old chickens were having a holiday at my daughters and she kept them for three weeks longer while I settled in the three babies.  I was expecting there to be battles when the three old girls returned to their home ground and found three babies  but it hasn’t happened.  The three old girls keep together and three new girls keep together.  We now get a couple of eggs a day which is more than enough to keep us in omelettes and quiche.  So to the photos the three new girls happily stick together on the  feeder and are still small enough for the three of them to fit.  That is the top RHS photo.  The bottom RHS photo is a close up of one of the new girls.  Then the LHS photos are of the old girls. The middle bottom showing all three sticking together.  As well as different breeds you can see that the young ones have much smaller crowns compared to the old girls.

Thank you to Melanie! I look forward to hearing more about the new chickens.  If this has inspired you to pick up your camera and take part in this challenge you have until 25th before this months link closes. It's great fun and this post should answer any questions or give other information that you need.

 To see this and more links for this month just go here and hopefully I'll be back with
 more photos from Melanie next month. I hope you will join us and thanks for popping by.